You are invited to stop in and check out Leica Camera’s new store and celebrate with them in San Francisco, California, USA.

Here is your invite.

Join us at the opening on August 15, 16 & 17, 2014.

Leica Store San Francisco463 Bush Street,
San Francisco, CA 94108
Tel.: 415-801-5061Leica Camera invites you to join us for the Leica Store San Francisco Grand Opening. Come experience our celebration of 100 years of Leica photography and the opening of this unique new Leica destination.

Leica Camera shares the passion for photography with many people around the world. It is the fascination of capturing a moment and the creative act of preserving it in a unique image.This is why Leica Camera has been designing and constructing new destinations showcasing the unique experience of owning and photographing with a Leica camera.As a part of the Leica Store San Francisco¹s opening celebrations we are offering several exciting photographic experiences.
Please see below for details and join us to experience Leica first hand.

Security researchers at Security Research Labs in Berlin have found a fundamental flaw (dubbed BadUSB) in USB devices that allows any compromised USB device to take over your computer. There are no known effective defenses against this variety of USB attack and solutions are estimated to be months and even years away.

The vulnerability arises because USB controllers can have their firmware easily reprogrammed so that they announce themselves as a different device type, a versality that has made USB extremely popular. However, benign devices can also be reprogrammed to turn malicious:

A device can emulate a keyboard and issue commands on behalf of the logged-in user, for example to exfiltrate files or install malware. Such malware, in turn, can infect the controller chips of other USB devices connected to the computer.

The device can also spoof a network card and change the computer’s DNS setting to redirect traffic.

A modified thumb drive or external hard disk can – when it detects that the computer is starting up – boot a small virus, which infects the computer’s operating system prior to boot.

With billions of USB devices out there, we could be facing a serious security situation of enormous proportion. And, don’t expect an immediate fix anytime soon. Your only protection: practice safe sex USB use: only plug in USB devices that you 100% trust into your computer; and, do not plug your USB device into another computer. Sound advice.

Editor’s note: This might or might not become the serious threat that SR Labs describe. But after they have presented their proof-of-concept, I guess any one who wants to will be able (and have the know-how) to exploit this vulnerability. Will this mean that even out-of-the-box USB devices from unreliable sources could be already compromised? Hopefully, the USB Implementers Forum (USB IF, the USB standards body) gets together soon to propose a quick solution.

MIT Media Lab researchers have developed a new display technology that automatically corrects for vision defects and could lead to e-reader and smartphone displays that let users dispense with glasses.

Imagine being able to consult your car’s dashboard-mounted GPS display without putting your glasses on (for far-sighted drivers) or read your tablet’s display without the need for reading glasses.

The vision-correcting display projects slightly different images to different parts of the viewer’s pupil. Using technology the Camera Culture Group has already developed for their glasses-free 3-D displays, two liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) are used in parallel to carefully tailor the images displayed on the LCDs to each other to allow the system to mask perspectives. The researchers plan to incorporate a third project which diagnoses vision defects so that the same device could determine the user’s prescription and automatically correct for it.

The first spectacles were invented in the 13th century. Today, of course, we have contact lenses and surgery, but it’s all invasive in the sense that you either have to put something in your eye, wear something on your head, or undergo surgery. We have a different solution that basically puts the glasses on the display, rather than on your head. It will not be able to help you see the rest of the world more sharply, but today, we spend a huge portion of our time interacting with the digital world.
– Gordon Wetzstein/MIT

Under the tag line “We make functional things stylish,” the 4 Pompidoo girls have struck again with another camera bag for women photographers that not only looks unabashedly elegant, luxurious and stylish but stays solidly functional.

The new Pompidoo Lima Camera Bag features two padded, removable dividers to hold 1) a compact camera, 2) a mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera or a mid-sized DSLR, with lens attached, and 3) one additional lens. Additionally, it contains 4) a cellphone pocket, 5) an inside zipper pocket to hold keys, personal items or money, and 6) slots for credit cards. The exterior walls and bottom of the bag are padded to provide added impact protection.

“This exhibition focuses on the role of photography within the archive, positioning the collection of images alongside other original artifacts. To complement the exhibition, a multi-faceted website will be launched in the fall of 2014 that will make the entire collection digitally accessible to scholars and the general public. The site will include cutting-edge interactive storytelling features, allowing for the development of international online dialogues. Students, recent alumni and faculty from across the Ryerson campus have come together to co-develop this multidisciplinary project.”

Ryerson University is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Canada’s connection to the world’s most famous cartoon/literary bear – Winnie-the-Pooh, thanks to a true “love story” between a Canadian soldier – veterinarian named Harry Colebourn and a real Canadian bear cub.

“The story of Harry and Winnie is a love story set against a very dark time in history and is a powerful reminder of the impact that one small loving gesture can have in this world. Winnie has played an important role in many people’s childhoods and I am very excited to get to share the historical items that bring to life the real tale behind the fictional ones.”

The cub came from White River (Ontario, Canada) and was sold to Captain Colebourn who named her Winnie, after his hometown of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada.

“Winnie traveled overseas with Colebourn’s regiment, becoming a proud mascot and beloved friend to the other soldiers.”

When it became time to go to the front lines in France, Colebourn donated Winnie to the London Zoo in England, where AA Milne and his son encountered the bear which became the inspiration for author A.A.Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh as well as his world famous Winnie the Pooh books.

This new exhibition entitled, Remembering the Real Winnie: The World’s Most Famous Bear Turns 100 will

“PHOTOgraphie: BC’s only professional photography festival. The festival’s purpose is to inspire and share the value of photography through education, gallery exhibitions and salon competition. For four days, the local community along with amateur and professional photographers are invited to take part in this interactive event.”

Instrument developers apply black paint to baffles and other components to help prevent stray light from ricocheting off surfaces. However, black paints absorb only 90 percent of the light that strikes it. A new super-dark material developed by a team of engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center absorbs about 99 percent of the visible, ultraviolet, infrared, and far-infrared light that strikes it, making it a good candidate to be used in imaging equipment.

It is called Vantablack and it is quite different than other blacks: you cannot tell if it is even there! VANTA is really an acronym that stands for Vertically Aligned (carbon) Nano Tube Array. The nanotech-based coating is a thin layer of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny hollow tubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. Vantablack absorbs 99.965% of the visible light that falls upon it. The result is that it looks weird, “like a [black] hole, like there’s nothing there.”

NASA is already considering using Vantablack in its infrared-sensing instruments since it is better at radiating heat away from the instruments. If these instruments are not cold, thermal heat (generated by the instrument and observatory) will swamp the faint infrared they are designed to collect (NOISE). The cooler the instrument can be, the more sensitive they will be to faint far-infrared signals emanating from objects in the very distant universe.

One day, that black rectangular empty space you see on your shelf may be your latest all-black body camera.

Everytime we think we have reached the limits of display technology, some new discovery comes along that expands the frontiers of what is achievable.

We’ve seen flexible LCDs already appearing on smartphone displays and even wide display TVs. But they consume lots of energy. A new nano-pixels (300 by 300 nanometres in size) technology from Oxford University, discovered by chance while “exploring the relationship between the electrical and optical properties of phase change materials“, is completely different and promises to allow the creation of incredibly thin (and therefore flexible) displays that are not only extremely high-resolution but have also low energy consumption.

“We didn’t set out to invent a new kind of display,” said Professor Harish Bhaskaran of Oxford University’s Department of Materials, who led the research. “We were exploring the relationship between the electrical and optical properties of phase change materials and then had the idea of creating this GST ‘sandwich’ made up of layers just a few nanometres thick. We found that not only were we able to create images in the stack but, to our surprise, thinner layers of GST actually gave us better contrast. We also discovered that altering the size of the bottom electrode layer enabled us to change the colour of the image.”

Flexible paper-thin displays based on the technology could have the capacity to switch between a power-saving ‘colour e-reader mode’ and a backlit display capable of showing video. So there is no need to constantly refresh all the pixels as in most conventional LCD screens, only those pixels that actually change, and hence the extremely low energy consumption required.

Practical applications for these nano-pixels display may include foldable screens, windshield displays, smart glasses, and even synthetic retinas that mimic the abilities of photoreceptor cells in the human eye.

Continues to July 13, 2014: Saturday & Sunday: Noon to 5 p.m

FREE Admission

“The Past is Never Far is a photographic series which explores the extraordinary changes Toronto has experienced since its founding. The show focuses on the work of three documentarians who lived here centuries apart.

The first is artist Elizabeth Simcoe, one of the first Europeans to document the early settlement through her watercolours. One of Toronto’s most prolific photographers, William James, Sr., is the second artist whose work is woven into the exhibition. The third is artist Summer Leigh, a recent graduate of Ryerson University, who revisited the locations documented by both Elizabeth Simcoe and William James Sr. She lined up their images with what exists in those places today, using old technologies with new, blending past and present. This alignment of images led her to the realization that the past is never far.”

Pop Up Gallery Launch Party

FREE Admission

The Disposable Camera Project (DCP) aims to democratize street photography by actually involving the people on the street. Cameras are hidden across the city and everyday people who find them are encouraged to take pictures, capturing moments that might have otherwise forever gone unnoticed. DCP wants to tell the stories of people in cities all over the world, through the people themselves. It’s street photography showcasing people on the street BY the people on the street. Spontaneous, unplanned & unfiltered. That’s DCP.

Come see the best photos to have come out of DCP’s first year of activity, celebrating a worldwide community captured in analogue, using the simplicity of snap-and-shoot disposable cameras. In collaboration with TUPF (Toronto Urban Photography Festival), it will also act as the festival closing gala.

Come for:
– A celebration of analogue photography
– Photo Giveaways/Raffles
– Drinks
– The world in one room

Moments that might never have been captured, for the people BY the people. That’s DCP.

Does it look to you like squirrels are more abundant this Summer? Not only did some of them made a nest into our house and we had to evict them (no harm done to mommy squirrel or babies) but now it looks like they have taken over our backyard.

This little rascal seems to think the backyard belongs to it, having the gall to lounge on the fence early this morning, soaking up the sun. It stayed there for about an hour, not even moving away as I opened the patio door and took a couple of shots with the Fujifilm X-T1 and FUJINON XR18-135mm F3.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR.

This video presents “Stories from the Northwest: WWII – The Photo That Almost Wasen’t.”

The story behind, “Wait for Me Daddy.”

Wait for Me, Daddy, taken by Claude P. Dettloff, a Vancouver Daily Province photographer. British Columbia Regiment, (Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles), marching in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, 1940.

“On October 1, 1940, Dettloff was photographing The British Columbian Regiment march down 8th Street enroute to battle overseas. In a random moment, Dettloff snapped a young boy, Whitey Bernard, escape his mother’s grasp and run towards his father marching off to war. Wait for Me Daddy became an enduring symbol of Canada’s WWII effort. The photo appeared on the cover of Life Magazine, was displayed in every school in BC during the war, was showcased in the Canadian war bond fundraising campaign with Whitey Bernard on tour, is the 2nd most requested photograph in the National Archives and is amongst the 30 most popular photographs in the world.”

More so in this year than in those past years, Canadians will acknowledge the historical significance of this world-famous photograph by partially reproducing Dettloff’s photograph in five ways as follows.